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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Socioeconomic transformations and extractive everyday life in the the the Lower Urubamba River (Peruvian Amazon)

presenters

    ELEANA PAOLA CATACORA SALAS

    Nationality: Perú

    Residence: QUILLABAMBA

    UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL INERTCULTURAL DE QUILLABAMBA

    Presence:Face to Face/ On Site

Keywords:

economic transformations, extractive practices, lower Urubamba

Abstract:

The Anthropocene process in the Amazon region of the Lower Urubamba is manifested through the social history of extractive, industrial and commercial activities developed in said territory, and the irreversible changes on the various forms of life (human, animal, plant, mineral, etc.) that those activities promote by interacting socioecologically with them. Thus, anthropogenic environmental disasters have been reported such as ruptures, fissures and leaks in gas pipelines, as well as spills of liquid natural gas, which involve extractive companies that exploit the hydrocarbon deposits in the region . If we consider other industrial activities (construction, transportation and communications), extractive activities and energy (electricity generation), we observe that they coexist in the same environment with different ethnic groups, as well as with different animal, plant, and mineral species, typical of the Amazonian megadiversity, which suffer its impact. In that sense, the Matsigenka, original inhabitants of lower Urubamba, whose history dates back to pre-Inca times, today experience a social life that relates them to the flora and fauna of their ecological environment, but also to extractive, industrial and referred trades, and their catastrophes. This raises questions that this research aims to answer. What are the social and cultural changes that the Anthropocene and extractive activities produce in the lives of the Matsigenka of Bajo Urubamba and the ways of life that constitute their ecological neighborhood? How do the Matsigenka experience and confront socially, culturally and cosmologically the anthropogenic changes of industrial and extractivist action? Thus, this study aims to comprehend how extractive activities have altered the livelihoods of the Matsigenka of Cashiriari and Segakiato in their interaction with other economies in the Lower Urubamba River